St. Paul could lose out on $1 million on annual fees now that the state of Minnesota has taken over many of its permitting operations.

Citing a lack of training and poorly completed inspections reports, the state’s departments of Health and Agriculture assumed control of St. Paul’s 2,100 annual restaurant, pool, hotel, deli and grocery inspections Tuesday.

The impact of that decision — a court ruling this week could halt it — is still being determined. Along with the lost revenue, the city could be forced to lay off 15 inspectors and supervisors.

“I haven’t slept for weeks,” said Graham Miller, who recently took an inspecting position with St. Paul. Miller, who spent nine months unemployed in 2011, would likely be one of those let go.

St. Paul has sought to stop the state move, filing for a temporary restraining order in Ramsey County District Court to halt it and accusing the state of upending a November plan to strengthen the city’s inspection operations.

“For the life of me, I can’t figure it out,” said St. Paul City Council president Kathy Lantry. “After six months, they just pulled the rug out. I’m not sure where this is coming from. The state gave us a prescribed period of time, and we were doing everything on their list.”

Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Ed Ehlinger and Minnesota Department of Agriculture Commissioner Dave Frederickson issued a joint written statement Wednesday saying “the public’s health and safety is our first priority — the fact is that the city of St. Paul’s inspection programs are simply not adequate and the public’s health is at risk.”

They continued: “When people preparing food aren’t washing their hands, the public’s health is at risk from deadly bacteria like Salmonella and E. Coli. When food isn’t being delivered in refrigerated trucks, the public’s health is at risk. When rat feces and urine are contaminating coffee filters, the public’s health is at risk. In the most recent reports, there were hundreds of serious violations noted just like this.”

Ricardo Cervantes, director of the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections, said the city has made hires to address state concerns. One relocated from Iowa to take an inspections job with the city this year. Another relocated from San Jose, Calif.

“We were unable to find the talent that we needed within the state, as required by the delegation agreement,” Cervantes said.

The agreement he referred to was crafted with the state Department of Health in November, and it gives the city two years to improve a food and business inspections program state officials say is badly lagging.

The state says it’s motivated by a basic concern for public safety. In terminating the city’s program, they said they found “serious” errors on 70 percent of St. Paul inspection reports in a two-month sampling; overdue inspections at 74 percent of the city’s pools; and an average of 8.8 inspections per city inspector in May, while the state monthly minimum is 25.

During a legal hearing Monday, an assistant state attorney general displayed a picture of a coffee pot surrounded by rodent droppings at an unnamed eatery, and said a city inspector gave the owner several days to clean it up. City officials have denied that was the case and said the site was ordered sanitized on the spot.

The Health Department also maintains that two city employees promoted to supervisor fared poorly in state standards testing. One failed and the other barely passed. Cervantes said the employee who failed was a plans inspector and not a field agent accustomed to going into food-service establishments.

Cervantes and Miller believe the state has been unduly harsh in penalizing the city for not living up to the November agreement so quickly. The state Department of Agriculture has been behind in its own inspections schedule for years, and two MDA workers hired two years ago to help alleviate the backlog only recently completed their training.

While the city awaits the decision on its temporary restraining order request, the ultimate decision may lie with the state Legislature. Lawmakers will likely be asked to review the state agencies’ decisions in the next legislative session.

Businesses pay about $1 million per year into city coffers for permitting fees, money that goes back into the city inspections program but does not cover all costs. The city directs about $350,000 per year from the general fund into that section of the Department of Safety and Inspections, Cervantes said.

Cervantes said the city has been flexible and business-friendly without compromising public safety. He notes 54 outdoor vendors, many from out-of-state, set up during the annual Hmong Freedom Celebration at Como Park last weekend. Despite outreach efforts, not all of them were fully licensed by the time the event rolled around, though they had paperwork in hand.

Rather than bar them from selling their wares at the sports festival, the Department of Safety and Inspections licensed several vendors over the weekend, and uploaded the information into the city’s computer system on Monday, after the fact.

St. Paul’s inspectors speak eight different languages, including Spanish, Hmong, Thai, Lao, Chinese, Somali and Italian, he notes. And they’re accustomed to inspecting family-run businesses that often sit in century-old buildings.

“We have a lot of older, more individual-owned establishments, not like the suburbs, where it’s newer strip malls,” Miller said.

Cervantes took issue with state accusations that his staff completed only 8.8 inspections per inspector in May. He said the state Health Department manager expected to compile that data was not stationed within the city, as expected, complicating how the data was transferred to state officials.

By his count, his inspectors completed an average of 16.5 individual inspections in April, 25.5 in May and 23.6 in June. The November agreement asks the city to complete 25 inspections per inspector each month. Cervantes said one reason the city fell behind in June was that several staffers spent long hours completing online training.

Until a resolution, Miller and other city inspectors are in limbo.

“A lot of sleepless nights. We had just barely caught up (financially) with being laid off the last time. This is the last thing we need,” said Miller, whose son recently graduated from college.

Despite the state’s accusations to the contrary, Miller said that he and his co-workers are qualified to do the job. He has spent 34 years in food inspection, about 14 of them in Minnesota.

During his decade in the private sector, he helped launch the quality assurance standards for Buffets Inc., the parent company of Old Country Buffet, which sent him to food suppliers all over the country to do inspections. After a short stint with Anoka County, Miller jumped at the chance for a busier position with the St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections four months ago.

Frederick Melo came to the Pioneer Press in 2005 and brings an aggressive East Coast attitude to St. Paul beat reporting. He spent nearly six years covering crime in the Dakota County courts before switching focus to the St. Paul mayor's office, city council, and all things neighborhood-related, from the city's churches to its parks and light rail. A resident of Hamline-Midway, he is married to a Frogtown woman. He Tweets manically at @FrederickMelo

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